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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23871898">Cat Claws</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sombreromoustache/pseuds/sombreromoustache'>sombreromoustache</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aspiring Writer Adora, Books, Bookstores, Cybernetics, F/F, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Secrets, Tags May Change</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:21:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23871898</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sombreromoustache/pseuds/sombreromoustache</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Adora, an aspiring writer spends her days buried in books and looking for inspiration and excitement in her life. And Catra, a mysterious girl that Adora meets at her bookstore one day and has her asking more questions each time she has an answer.<br/>Underneath the glove, is a world Adora could hardly imagine, and one Catra will struggle to defend her from.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adora/Catra (She-Ra)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I only write when I’m inspired, but I’m inspired every day. An author Adora heard about once said that, and she was greener for it. <br/>
</p><p>Every year since she was eleven she made it her goal to read twenty-five books a year. At first this was pretty difficult, jumping from one three-hundred page novel about Newfoundland fishermen to a two-hundred page book about a group of cats coming together for their secret club, was akin to slow-moving trains giving her whiplash. When she was eleven she spent all of her winter break trying desperately to catch up and complete her goal. It was when she was fourteen that the goal became easy and she was eighteen did she start passing her goal by. Adora read through what had to be at least double her goal when she graduated high school. Everywhere she went, in her purse or in her backpack was at least one book and a dozen bookmarks. In a day and age where students were lambasted for gluing their eyes to cell phones, Adora had it pretty easy reading in class. What teacher was gonna give a kid crap for reading, after all? <br/>
</p><p>But she paid attention to her studies and was a runner-up to Valedictorian but a few other girls from wealthier families petitioned her as a candidate. Not that she didn’t mind, because she still received plenty of scholarships to all kinds of colleges. Even Yale sent her a letter. But, Adora was the kind of girl who liked visiting not so much moving and she picked a school in Texas. Out of a choice between the University of Texas down in Austin or Texas Tech, only an hour’s drive away.<br/>
</p><p>Well, Adora liked saving on gas and sticking around her roots, so a Red Raider she became. She pursued a Master in Library Science and Information which didn’t surprise anyone since she kept her nose in books all the time, and most people thought that Adora would be an old woman with plastic glasses and fake nails at a computer for a university when all was said and done. Adora would agree, except for the glasses and nails part since she had good vision and thought herself too butch for nailwork. What Adora really had in mind was her nose in one of her own stories.<br/>
That was the real reason why Adora read all those books. She heard from a young age that a writer must want to write and read a lot if they ever hope to tell a good story. Adora took that to heart and read all kinds of books to find ones she liked and ones she wanted to write like. And, she found her own writing wasn’t half-bad. The problem was she never knew what she wanted to write about. She tried thinking of random ideas but none of them stuck. She went to websites that suggested plots and premises to try out but it wasn’t for her. Adora wanted to write so bad but. It wasn’t gonna come. That was the horrifying conclusion.<br/>
All of Adora’s life, she never left her part of the world. She had spent her whole life in West Texas among cattle and oil wells, and never once left the Lone Star State. Hell, she struggled to remember if she ever left West Texas!<br/>
And on that lonely day, right at the beginning of Summer when she would be all by her lonesome in the dead hours of a bookstore when hardly anyone showed up, she received a surprise.<br/>
She was reading the first book in a series called the Iron King that was supposed to be about French nobles and also the predecessor to the Song of Ice and Fire, wanting to get home when a visitor stopped by. She was Mexican and had long, wild, brown hair brushed back so none of it was in her face, and behind her black aviators was a yellow and turquoise eye. She wore a leather jacket over a tank top, jeans with cut patches on top of a pair of boots. But the first thing that Adora noticed was the woman’s hands, which were covered by leather gloves with the ends of the fingers torn open.<br/>
“Yeah, hi. Can I get this or?” she asked after dropping a copy of the first Maximum Ride book.<br/>
Adora was shocked that they had a visitor, especially during this part of the day, and didn’t know how to respond. Then she saw the book and felt an aneurism coming on, “Are you sure you wanna read this? It’s kinda a kids book.”<br/>
“I haven’t read books since I was five. And it looks cool. It has a girl with wings, what’s cooler than that?” she asked rhetorically.<br/>
“Ok, ok, fair,” Adora laughed, “Can I see your Student ID?”<br/>
Adora didn’t notice, but the girl’s hand went back to her side, “I’m not a student. Here. Is that gonna be a problem?”<br/>
Adora shook her head, “Oh no! It isn’t, I just assumed that you went to school here! We give discounts to students with ID!,” this girl had an effect on Adora. Her aviators were tinted to hide her eyes from someone who wasn’t looking, but with only a table between them Adora could see the look in her eyes. A full glare, and even though Adora stood taller, she couldn’t shake the feeling like she was being looked down upon. She looked down at her gloves again and saw her left index finger tapping the wood with a thud, “Well, that book’s gonna be six dollars. Is that alright with you?”<br/>
The girl raised an eyebrow, “If it was alright with me, it would be free. But if you want an answer to your question, then yeah. It’s alright,” she said, dropping bills on the counter.<br/>
Adora counted the bills and cashed them into the register. She assumed that this customer had no desire for a receipt and didn’t bother to print one, “I hope you like it, and please take a bookmark! It’ll save you from needing to remember!” she smiled, “And, if you get done with it, maybe you can come back for more?”<br/>
She grabbed the book and nodded, “Well. We’ll just see if I like reading before I finish it. Thanks,” she pulled down her aviators and smiled, “I’ll see you around, Adora.”<br/>
She watched her walk away and blushed without knowing, “H-how did you know my name?”<br/>
Before she walked out of the library the girl looked back and laughed, “It’s on your nametag, dork!”<br/>
Adora looked down at her chest and indeed her name was on. She even discovered that it was upside down.</p><hr/>
<p>The girl left the bookstore to the small parking lot in front of it. There she expected her motorcycle, a Triumph New Bonneville to be alone. Instead it stood next to a Harley Night Train, and its owner leaned against a nearby tree.<br/>
“Going out for smokes?” his voice sounded like he smoked cigarettes since he was born, “Or did you get the milk I asked you for?”<br/>
The girl sneered, “Just got something to pass the time. Don’t get up my ass about it,” she dropped the book in her bike’s sidebag and got on her bike and kicked the stand back, “You coming back or are you just gonna try and look cool in front of an empty lot?”<br/>
He grunted, “Don’t draw attention to yourself, Cat.”<br/>
She rolled her eyes, “Whatever, Kid,” she turned the ignition on and rode off ahead, leaving him behind. She weaved in and out of traffic, ran red lights and ignored the speed limit. She was in complete control of her bike, but her eyes kept going back to that memory of that librarian, “I really hope I like reading like I told her. I would like an excuse to see that face again.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Adora was twenty-four years old, tied her hair back and only let it down when she was asleep, wore blue jeans and only swapped them out for overalls, and two different kinds of shirts, graphic tees and tank tops. She lived in a modest apartment outside Bexar County, one bathroom one bed and drove around in a ten year old Honda Civic she bought off a rancher’s wife up in Winters for a thousand dollars. She hadn’t seen her walls in years, given how she was surrounded by shelves lined with books, save for a couch and a tv attached to a Playstation 4. <br/>But the part of her house she hated more than anything was the desk she worked at where her laptop was. Next to it was a notebook above a waste paper basket overflowing with bad ideas. Like I said before, Adora wanted to be a writer but she couldn’t latch onto an idea to write about. Most people have this idea of writing that you get this idea and you just run, but Adora figured out that you can’t run with it. It would fall out of your hands, and either break or you lose interest. And every time Adora started running, the idea would break and she would find herself stuck.<br/>Either that, or she found herself stuck with an idea she didn’t want to spend multiple years of her life on. <br/>She intentionally never emptied the basket until she found herself an idea she wanted to work on. One that was worth stewing. <br/>But until then, she tried to write at least one idea down and a hundred or so words to the idea she liked at the moment. But she was lucky to get ten down. <br/>“My whole life, has been not afflicted with writer’s block, oh no! It has been under a writer’s cement block! And, damn. It is crushing,” she complained, pacing around her apartment, “This fucker right here,” she pulled the first Song of Ice and Fire book and aggressively pointed at George R. R. Martin’s name, “He sits on his ass and shits out five words a day and is loved by everyone, and me. I shit out ten, and. No one even knows me.”<br/>Adora looked at her fridge and thought of the bottle of gin she got for Christmas a few years ago. She wondered if it was still good and was considering chugging it down when she got a text. She picked up her phone and read out loud, “At Chipotle. You wanna come?” she laughed and texted back, “Yeah, can you get me a carne asada burrito? It’ll only cost ye twelve-eighty-five! What the fuck?! Be there soon.” <br/>Adora looked back at the fridge and remarked, “Sorry, Qui Gonn Gin. Glimmer’s calling me”</p>
<hr/>
<p>Adora stepped through the doors of the Chipotle and immediately saw Glimmer sitting by the window on one of the high benches. She sipped from her fountain drink and dipped one of her chips into a cup of queso. She waved over to Adora and she followed, sitting opposite of her, “Wait, did you actually get me a burrito?”<br/>“Hm? Oh, yeah! You said you wanted Carne Asada, right?” Glimmer asked through the queso covered chips in her mouth.<br/>“I was actually thinking of a taco bowl or something but, this is fine. You know I was quoting a meme right?” Adora asked as she pulled the foil off her burrito. <br/>Glimmer stared at her friend, “Please, don’t talk to me about me me’s, I don’t keep up with them and I’m so tired of Bow always sending me them!” <br/>“So I take it you haven’t seen the meme?” Adora pulled out her phone and scrolled until she found it, “Here you go!” <br/>Glimmer watched the clip of Mr. Krabs’s request for a carne asada burrito from Chipotle, and looked back at Adora, “W as in for what. H as in the heck. And Y as in.... your video was dumb? Yeah that was dumb, Adora,” she complained. <br/>“I forget you’re not as into memes as me and Bow are,” Adora laughed, biting into her burrito. <br/>“For a good reason. It’s to preserve my sense of humor!” <br/>Adora snorted, “Is that so? Well then lay it on me, what’s a joke you got?” <br/>Glimmer, having been put on the spot, spent a moment thinking of a joke before snapping her fingers, “Ok, I got it! Two tomatoes are walking down the streetand one of them starts falling behind. Right? Well the other tomato says, hey. Tomato paste!” <br/>Glimmer smiled but Adora just looked at her with a raised eyebrow, “Don’t you mean ketchup?”<br/>Glimmer’s arm came up in surprise, “You’ve heard the joke before?!” <br/>Adora laughed, “So, what’s up?” <br/>“Oh you know. Waiting to get accepted by UT so I can start working on my masters. Hitting the gym and all, trying to get buff, or buffer and you know. Same old same old. What about you? Still working on that story?”<br/>Adora blew air through an awkward facial expression, “I threw that in the trash. I couldn’t stand it.” <br/>“Again? Adora, what does that make this idea?”<br/>“If you could remember the number that would be great,” <br/>Glimmer frowned at her friend, “Adora. I can’t write for shit, you know this. But, maybe you need to work on something smaller? Maybe like, a fanfiction or something?” <br/>“Have I sunk that low, Glimmer?”<br/>“I mean, didn’t Bow work on a big ass fanfiction in high school?”<br/>“You would know better than I did. I’ve known y’all for what, two years?” Adora sipped her drink, “I’ll tell you this. I, met this girl at work.” <br/>Glimmer smiled, “Ooooh! What’s she like?”<br/>Adora shook her head trying to hide her blush, “So. I didn’t really meet her, but. I saw her. She, bought a book off of us. But goddamn she was pretty.”<br/>“What’s she like?” <br/>“Tank top, leather jacket. Boots, and I mean good boots. Plus she rides a bike, a real bike. Glimmer, there is a lot of things that I like in this world but bikes are pretty high up there,”<br/>Glimmer’s eyes went back and forth on behind Adora and to Adora, “Was she Puerto Rican like me, or was she Mexican?”<br/>“I think she was Mexican, yeah,” <br/>“And. She has big brown hair, right?”<br/>“Good guess,”<br/>“And... does she wear leather gloves?”<br/>Adora stared at her friend in disbelief, “Glimmer. Are you psychic?”<br/>“No but I can pick a girl out from the crowd,” Glimmer pointed behind Adora. <br/>Adora turned around and saw, standing in line was the very girl that she saw yesterday, “Holy crap. That’s her!” <br/>“I know right?!”<br/>“Ok, Glimmer. What do I do?” <br/>Glimmer stared, “What do you mean ‘What do you do?’ You go up and you ask her how she is,” <br/>“I’ve uh, I’ve never done that before,” <br/>“Never done that before? Are you telling me that Adora von Meyer has never once flirted with a girl in her life?” Glimmer laughed. She looked up and smiled, “If so then she’s about to.” <br/>Just as she was starting to figure out what she meant she heard, “Hey, Adora,” she turned around and saw her standing behind her, “Didn’t expect to see ya here.” <br/>“Oh uh, hey! You. It’s, well. Me! After all!” Adora laughed, “It’s Adora.”<br/>The girl nodded, “Right, I got that. Well, it’s nice to see you I really liked that book I bought off ya.”<br/>“Oh yeah? How far are you into it?” <br/>“About fifty pages. I like it! I really like all those bird brains,” she laughed.<br/>Adora nodded, “Um. This is my friend, Glimmer. We were actually just talking about you.”<br/>Glimmer smiled and offered her name, “Hi! Glorymar Esperanza, but most people call me Glimmer. Adora didn’t mention your name?” <br/>She looked down at Glimmer’s hand and slapped it, “Cat. Uh. Catra, I would prefer. My parents had a weird taste in names. But that’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” <br/>“So, Catra. Would you like to sit down and have lunch with us? I mean, Glimmer is all but done but I’ve still got half a burrito left!” Adora offered.<br/>Catra looked at the table and at Adora, “That sounds nice but, I’m actually doing a lunch run right now for some of my coworkers. But I’ll see you around, Adora. It was nice seeing you again. Maybe if we run into each other, it’ll be fate?” <br/>Adora was startled, “Fate? For what?”<br/>Catra laughed, “I guess we’ll both find out,” she looked over when she heard her order number called out, “That’s me. Gotta run. I’ve got hungry mouths to feed.” <br/>“Well, if you ever wanna see me, I’m always at that bookstore!” Adora said, standing up to get closer to Catra. <br/>“Good to know,” <br/>Catra took the paper bags and walked out of the store but not before saying, “See ya round, Adora.” <br/>Adora watched her leave and get on her bike, “God. Glimmer, have you ever seen such power in one person?”<br/>Glimmer saw where Adora’s eyes were and shook her head, “Well guess that confirms you’re a bottom, Adora!”<br/>Adora had never felt so called out and considered throwing her carne asada burrito from Chipotle at Glimmer’s face for spitting the cold hard truth. But she did scream out, “God damn it, Glimmer!” and that earned them more than a few glares from employees and customers alike.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Shave and a haircut on the door and Catra let herself in, “Honey, I’m home,” she walked past the monolith of a computer server into the living room, “I got food!” <br/>A woman nearly twice Catra’s size came up behind her, “Hey there, wildcat!” <br/>“Scorpia! You better not squeeze me!” she turned around and pointed at her.<br/>“Well as you can see, I’m not equipped to do that. Entrapta’s working on my arms in her room,” Scorpia explained.<br/>“Same here,” Catra heard a knife scratching a metal surface and looked over at him, “You wouldn’t mind helping Scorpia eat, would you?” he waved his left hand, “I’ve only got one for me.”<br/>“Neither of you can ask for your arms back?” Catra asked deadpan.<br/>“It’s Entrapta, Catra. We don’t get ‘em until she’s done,” Scorpia explained. <br/>“Or if there’s an emergency. And right now, there’s not,” he answered.<br/>Catra glared at him, “Fine. C’mon, Scorpia.” <br/>“Yay!” she squeed, following Catra into the kitchen table.<br/>He looked over and grunted, “Hand me my food at least?”<br/>“You got one hand don’t ya?” Catra called back. He growled but he walked into the dining room to collect his food, “While I was gone. Did we get any information on our mission?” <br/>He grunted, “Nah. Still waiting.” <br/>“How long will that take?” <br/>He grabbed his burrito and walked back to his recliner saying along the way, “Few days tops. Why?”<br/>“No reason,” there was a reason.<br/>And thinking about her got her through feeding a 6’10 woman with no arms.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Scorpia is 6'10, Noelle called me to confirm. </p>
<p>if y'all wanna know where that carne asada burrito thing is from, watch this </p>
<p>https://twitter.com/theunclealshow/status/1222568068431388672?lang=en</p>
<p>fun fact i am friend of a friend of this guy.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I had an image in my mind of Catra and then I thought of Adora as a librarian. But then A03 suggested bookstore and that worked better. I'll see what ideas come to my head, but have this for now.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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